How to Pronounce Knife
Winner of the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize
-
- R$ 44,90
-
- R$ 44,90
Descrição da editora
WINNER OF THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
'Spellbinding' i
'Breathtaking' Elle
'Powerhouses of feeling and depth' Mary Gaitskill
'Sharp and vital' Daisy Johnson
'Excellent' Margaret Atwood on Twitter
An ex-boxer turned nail salon worker falls for a pair of immaculate hands; a mother and daughter harvest earthworms in the middle of the night; a country music-obsessed housewife abandons her family for fantasy; and a young girl's love for her father transcends language.
In this stunning debut, Souvankham Thammavongsa captures the day-to-day lives of immigrants and refugees in a nameless city, illuminating hopes, disappointments, love affairs, and above all, the pursuit of a place to belong.
'There is not a moment off in these affecting stories' Sheila Heti
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet Thammavongsa (Cluster) makes her fiction debut with this sharp and elegant collection that focuses on the hopes, desires, and struggles of Lao immigrants and refugees in an unnamed English-speaking city. In one of the best stories, "Slingshot," a 70-year-old woman experiences a sexual reawakening with her 32-year-old neighbor, Richard: "It was the start of summer and I wanted something to happen to me." In "Randy Travis," a seven-year-old daughter is made to write hundreds of letters to country singer Randy Travis after her mother who can't write in English becomes obsessed with him, and watches her father wear cowboy boots and flannel in an attempt to draw his wife's attention. In "Mani Pedi," a former boxer begins working at his sister's nail salon ("It amazed him to see clients transformed. It was like what happened in the ring, but in reverse.") and pines after a wealthy white client. In "A Far Distant Thing," two 12-year-old girls have a short but meaningful friendship before they lose touch and their lives take different paths. Thammavongsa's brief stories pack a punch, punctuated by direct prose that's full of acute observations: in the final story, about a mother and her 14-year-old daughter picking worms at a hog farm, those laboring in the field "looked like some rich woman had lost a diamond ring and everyone had been ordered to find it." This is a potent collection.)
